Character Building, Optimization and Strategies
For a better in-depth strategy for defeating Koohii, see the Strategies section on Koohii's page here. Crystal Story II allows for a great deal of customization and combinations. As there are 6 classes and 5 levels per class, given enough SP, one could attain total mastery of all classes. As there are various choices to be made, you can create a very balanced character or a character favoring Attack/HP or another favoring Magic ability and Magic Points. (However, IMHO 200 MP are sufficient for defeating just about anything except the Dargon King and Koohii.) In favor of a more balanced strategy are numerous of the tougher bosses, who may kill multiple of your party members. While you may be able to use items as Revive, Full Revive, healing potions, or cast the equivalent spells, casting healing spells is based on the caster's Magic ability (and weapon). In my opinion, good general purpose weapons would be the Balanced (Evoblade, Balisong, Twin Trigger, Judgement) and HP steal (Souleater, Life, Life Zapper, Bloodscythe) weapons. The Balanced weapons are 20-25% stronger and faster than the HP Steal weapons, but the latter allow for less necessity to cast healling. (Of course, it could be argued that dispatching enemies faster means less necessity for healing. In terms of math, the Balanced IV Level 99 is +231 speed, magic, and attack compared to HP Steal, so you are going to be hitting more often and harder.) On Healing Magic The girls only miss two healing magic types, while the men miss three. Auto Raise is exclusive to D, but D cannot learn Cure All or Holy Light. He also is strong in the physical side of things. Mari has the best innate magic stats, but lacks Holy Light (G. Group Heal)...however, Mari also has Regen All. Kaz is ATK orientied, and lacks Raise All...but has everything else. Ultimaately, the best spell list goes to Lina, who has everything but the two unique spells. Of course, Lina will be an extremely quick character and may be better at buffing than healing. Bottom line: I think Mari and Lina are the two best choices. Specializing In favor of a more specialized character are that certain items e.g., the Attack/Magic/Guard wepons, would also favor certain stats. Also, specializing certain characters increases the efficiency for killing enemies and bosses. In general, the male characters, namely Kaz, favor HP and ATCK and the female characters, namely Mari favor MAG. In my opinion, Lina is the fastest character unless specifically specialized not to be. Since the game gives you a lot of items (Revive, Healing Potions, Manna Potions, etc.), you could have one character specialize in using the Item Plus weapon (Materialauncher, Kris, Pocket Pistol, Demonchaser). This character would be very specialized to use Bursts (Grenades, SuperG renades, and Rockets) to do damage as as you do 150% ATK damage well as some Magic secondary support and Regular Attacks and would use potions (150% heal on potions and tonics, irrespective of stat) and items. A character that specializes using Bursts should focus on the ATK stat. These are weapons that I don't think are very useful as they have such limited use: Resistance (reducing Nerf duration), Buf Player, Nerf Enemy, Buf Duration, Last Resort. The ATK / Magic / Speed weapons seem to require u to build you're character around that stat. Compared to the Balance weapon, the ATK weapon sacrifices Magic signifigantly (-467 points) and some speed (-261) for a high ATK rating (+374 points). If say, we build one character where you minimize MP and Magic bonuses, and primaraly pick ATK, Speed, and some HP, that might be a way to specialize. Conversely, if u play a Magic specialized character, you could pick some MP and primarily Magic and Speed, and as little ATK as possible. The Speed weapon allows us to have more frequent actions (-261 points to ATK and Magic, +251 to Speed). If you try to play a "fast" character where you pick Speed regularly and balance points, you can expect somewhere around 1600-2000 Speed, so +251 is about 1/8 faster. In contrast, the fastest Hard mode regular enemies are about 1150 (1200 for a Birdo). The fastest Normal mode character am the Dargon King (Speed= 416) and the fastest Hard mode character is the first form of Koohii, Speed = 1700. For some reason, the second, giant form of Koohii am slower (Speed=1400) but has higher stats (3333 instead of 2500 and more HP, 220000 instead of 198000). Even if you do a Quicken, I don't think specializing on the Speed weapon and on a fast character is a good way to go. That said, while having astronomickal speed does not help much with Koohii, i think having high speed is useful for mass stealing or rapid use of bufs. Node choices In general, these are the rules I used for building my characters: 1. If ever there's a choice between HP and (whatever else), choose the one that is NOT HP. If you don't choose HP, your HP totals when you max out should be: D 2851, Lina 2333, Mari 2597, and Kaz 3170. That's plenty of HP to defeats anyone except Koohii. You can give Lina all the Stat HP potions you get until she even up with everyone else if your concerned. Just make sure to buff up vs. Koohii and wear the Full Armors. 2. Generally, don't pick MP (except in rule #1 above -- if HP vs. MP, pick MP, but otherwise pick the other choice if MP vs. other). If you only choose MP instead of HP and otherwise pick other, you'll end up with MP: D 189, Lina 195, Mari 223, and Kaz 194. You can give D, Kaz, and Lina a few Stat MP potions (you'll get at least three just in the Wanted Z qusts). 3. If you have a choice between two stats, pick the one that would give you more points e.g., 5 ATK vs 4 SPD, pick 5 ATK. 4. If the points are equal, pick the stat that is currently lower, unless you are trying for a specialized character, in which case pick the character's specialization (ATK or MAG). The SPD stat is the frequency of attack and damage per unit time is going to be ATK÷SPD (if physical attacks or boosts) or MAG÷SPD (if using magic). If you are making a character dedicated to a certain style (such as making Mari a serious Mage) you should avoid the other offensive stat (in the Mari Mage case, avoid ATK. When it is MAG or SPD, follow steps 3 and 4). Keeping Useful Equipment Around A player does not need to only heal in combat but can heal after combat is completed, so conceivibly, you could keep the Heal Plus weapons (Holylight, Calm, Repair Pistol, and Angel Wing) to equip before casting healing spells. Unfortunatley (or fortunatley) if you have 3 Full Armor Tier IV Level 11 per character, u really won't need to use healing very often. Moreover, if you max out stats, you may find you have 800+ MAG (plus bonuses due your choice of weapon) and base HP in the 2500-3500 range, so you really don't need 1.5 x (783+80) or if I have Magic Up, 1.5 x 1.8 x (783+800) healing that often. I find that if I do a MAG UP (1.8x) and use the balanced weapon (866+800), this is plenty of healing in battle. One could also look up the Bestiary before entering into battle and if the enemy casts certain spells -- one could equip the appropriate gems e.g., the Djinnie uses all Fire based attacks, so you could equip the Fire Gem. The Guard skill costs 2 MP and is pretty substantial for the Action Bar (2/3 of total bar) whereas a normal attack is only 1/2 of total bar. In addition, retaliatory damage is only 75% of ATK and buffs do not affect this amount. While you take less physical damage -- at 66% instead of 80% for a Defense Up -- but not less magical damage or group affecting abilities like Dargon King's Judgement, this doesn't seem worth it. Let's say D has 800 ATK, 800 MAG, 800 SPD, 3000 HP without a weapon. D with Frostblade IV Level 99: 1400 ATK, 1272 MAG, 1435 SPD, 4470 HP. So retaliatory attack = 1050. D with Evoblade IV Level 99: 1666 ATK, 1666 MAG, 1666 SPD, 3000 HP. Note that D with Evoblade IV (without buffs) is going to consistently hit for more damage, cast for more magic damage, and attack a little faster. There are a number of things that really imbalance this in favor of Evoblade over Frostblade: 1) Buffs (e.g., Attack Up, Magic Up). Buffed D is going to do at least 2x the retalliation damage and also more frequently since it costs less action bar. 2) 3 Sets of Full Armor Tier IV Level 11. If you have this, you won't be affected by elemental attacks or by physical attacks (those will heal you). The only things that affect you are Group Effects like Judgement or Nerfs/Statuses/Conditions. ITEM PLUS CALCS Somewhere around ATK=400 and SPD=400, a character who is specialized in ATK and uses the Item Plus weapon (even to Tier IV Level 99) will do more damage per unit time with bursts than a character who uses the Balanced weapon, everything else (buffs, etc.) equal. Let's say you use Kaz and he has ATK=600 and SPD=500. As you can see, you are doing about 5% more damage per Koohii action with Item Plus weapon by using Rockets. Most useful items IMHO - Weapons: HP Steal, Balanced, one character with Item+ Armor: Booster (First Strike), Dice (Luck), Mirror (Evasion), Monocle (25% chance of critical = double damage), Full Armor, Start All, Gems. Note that as in the armor section, if you have Full Armor IV Level 11 = Resist Physical -35% and Resist Magic -35%, and you have a Fire Gem (= Resist Fire -100%), then if you get hit by a Fire spell, u will be''' healed''' for 35% of the damage instead of taking damage. Amusing combos Full Armor IV Level 11 x 3 - heal 5% per physical or magical hit, immune to everything except stati (including poison). You'll also never need to cast Defense Up. Booster+Start All+Monocle - First turn buffed action every time, with 25% chance to do double damage! (Chances are good if you have a fast character, with Booster+Start All All has a Quicken buff, you'll get in 3 actions before the enemy can get in 1. e.g., If D has Evoblade Tier IV Level 99 and has all but one class completed, he'll be approximately ATK and SPD around 1400, faster than all creatures. With the Start All, you will have SPDx2 due to Quicken. You will get first move, and most of the time, enemies will be below the 50% mark on the Action Bar. Which means you could us D to do Charge, Charge, Dragon's Breath before the enemy can even twitch! Best items at different scenarios Prior to defeating the Dargon King, you won't get any Sapphire or Ruby drops, so the maximum you can get is Tier III for all weapons and armors. At this point, there isn't a huge difference, although not having to heal is often a plus. I tended to favor the HP Steal weapons and one Full Armor Tier III Level 11 per character and some random items. After defeating the Dargon King, it's helpful to get all characters with one Dice (for item farming) and getting components to build appropriate weapons. I'm currently trying to optimize and have Tier IV Level 99 weapons for HP Steal, and Balanced and plan to make one Item+ weapon on my next Ruby. It's also worth it to have a total of 12 Full Armor Tier IV Level 11 before going into the middle islands. Abyss runs in hard mode are great for advanced item farming although I haven't seen a lot of Mirrors or Monocles (I think I got my second Monocle via Mecenary Defense). I am a little embarrassed to admit that with each character with 4 Full Armor Tier IV Level 11, you will have little difficulty even with Fury, Bunch, Bahumot or even Koohi #1 or Koohi #2.' '''NOTEWORTHY DAMAGING ATTACKS/Charge attacks Category:Help Category:Candidates for deletion Category:Image Requested